Back in Texas!!!!

I had to go back in blog posts to see how long we've been gone - we left Texas on May 3! So, we've been away for 5 months + 1 week - all of the hot, sticky, unbearable summer!

We are staying at Thousand Trails Lake Texoma for a few days; we still plan to head toward Lewisville on Saturday (10/15).

We are dealing with a "unique" issue of being fulltimers, or at least, being folks who spend a large amount of time outside of Texas. Last year, the state of Texas changed how they did registration and inspections, essentially requiring you to get an inspection before you could register the vehicle in Texas. This caused us some issues last year as we purchased Miss Doozie in July, but were not able to get the state inspection completed in Texas until August - so we could not register her in Texas within the 30 days after purchase as required (and had to pay a penalty as a result!). In addition, the inspection station recorded a wrong VIN on the inspection report, so it was filed with that VIN in the State of Texas system, so we could not do the registration because we didn't have an inspection on file for the appropriate VIN. We had to take Miss Doozie back to the inspection station and have her re-inspected (in September) with the inspection identifying the correct VIN, before we could register her in Texas.

Anyway, Miss Doozie's registration then ran out in September this year - and we weren't anywhere near Texas (well, we were in Illinois by the end of September, but we still had an appointment at HWH in Iowa, so we weren't going to make it back to Texas). There is a provision for us (it also applies for military personnel who don't have their vehicles in Texas) - we could renew our registration without having a valid inspection, but we need to have it inspected within 3 days of arrival at our "home, duty station, or destination". We have the added complication this year of needing to return to the place that did the inspection last year as they charged us for both the original inspection and the re-inspection (for the correct VIN) and they "owe" us a state inspection for no charge. So, we will return "home" on Saturday, and get it inspected on Monday, if all goes well!

Unfortunately, the renewed registration sticker is at our mail folder in Livingston (they emailed me to let me know that something from the state of Texas arrived since they know those things may be time-sensitive) - so we'll need to get it sent to us sometime soon too. The Jeep needs to have its registration renewed in October, so we'll be able to get the inspection completed and the registration renewed while we're in Texas. We will also be making a trip to Polk County (where Livingston is) sometime in the next few weeks so we can vote, so we'll be able to pick up mail there if need be.